Saturday, May 15, 2010

Busy Garden, Slacking Gardener

So today my daughter graduates from college. The grandmothers have come in to see the event, though I'm sure my daughter is wishing that she could just avoid the whole thing. No such luck for her. We get to see her get handed a little piece of paper whether she likes it or not. But because of company I haven't gotten out to the garden much. I did succeed in getting out for just a few minutes yesterday.

I had a couple of chores. First I had to move the row cover off of the bean and spring spinach bed. I needed the cover to finish the hardening off of my tomatoes and peppers. The sad spring spinach will have to live without it.

And I say sad because above is what you see more in the spinach patch than spinach this year. This is the self sown deer tongue lettuce. I'll have to move it out when I plant the beans, but it is growing delightfully. Thank goodness for the over wintered spinach, because the spring spinach just didn't grow.

Also in the bed I had sown the Jacob's Cattle beans just so I wouldn't have to toss them. I was doing a germination test on some local beans that they sell for eating. Well I think they would be great for sowing too as they germinate beautifully. Luckily they were under the row cover during our cold snap.

Ottawa Cranberry Bean

The beans I sowed last week also are just starting to come up. So the pregermination in the paper towels seems a success so far. Though for dried beans I really don't need the season extension a lot. I get a harvest by the later sowing. It is just the harvest dates that could change. Late August is a better time to harvest than middle September. We often get long dry spells then. September tends to be wetter. So if this makes them mature a few weeks earlier, so much the better.

Then since I was out I peeked under the brassica row cover. It looks so pretty doesn't it? OK I agree it looks kind of jumbled up and messy, but most things were growing well, especially with the soapy water white traps (which are working wonderfully on the flee beetles). I had two exceptions. The overwintered spinach section that has broccoli interplanted was ready to be all pulled out. And just in time. The broccoli there is about half the size as the broccoli outside of the spinach. I hope it still has time to produce.

In addition the Choy Sum was bolting as was the Ching Chang bok choy. We have had some wild temperature fluctuations over the last few weeks. From about 90 to about 34. Asian greens hate these kinds of swings. The others seem to be holding in there. The Shanghai bok choy from Mac shows no signs of bolting yet and is almost ready to pick. Probably next week. My understanding of the name "Shanghai" bok choy just means baby bok choy and there are many varieties of it. So I'm not sure which I'm actually growing, which is too bad because if it works well it means I can't order more. If I'm wrong about that, someone correct me.

In new house news, I'm hoping the bed that I'm using for my garden this year will be all ready to plant by the end of the day. The bed is behind a rock wall. The builders back filled it with rock. So we had to hire someone to come in and dig out all the rock and fill it with soil. As a record keeping note this is not going into the costs of the vegetable garden, as even if I were just putting in ornamentals I would be doing this. I'll be adding in things to the vegetable garden budget that I wouldn't other wise do, like the rodent fence and the raised beds. Since I'm not around during the day, I'm just hoping it gets done. I much prefer to be around when the workers are if there are any issues. The raised bed section of the garden won't be done in time for planting - maybe for fall crops but not for summer. But this section has about 200 sqft of planting space so it is a little smaller than my current garden. I'm just going to plant summer vegetables and hope the fall garden gets up.

16 comments:

I transplanted some green beans under row cover the other day and they seem to be only slightly sun damaged despite the fact that I didn't harden them off before doing so. I need to be better at transitioning my plants.

You must feel like such a proud parent today! What a milestone! Enjoy the ceremony.

Congratulations to you and your daughter! My daughter heads off to college later this summer - so my adventure in the college years is just beginning. High school graduation next month to look forward to though.

Our weather has been rather erratic this year too and it definitely stresses out certain greens. I am just hoping the broccoli is not phased by it and gives me some decent heads. I have a suspicion though that my spinach patch is going to bolt on me early this year. Hope I am wrong about that!

Congratulations to your daughter, and congrats to you for being the proud parent (and pretty green veg gardener!) We pretend that the graduation(s) are only for the parents, but really it is pretty pride inducing to be standing on that stagem so it's a win-win situation.

Congratulations to your daughter on her graduation, you must be thrilled.

I wonder why your spinach is being so fussy, perhaps it doesn't like the temperature swings either. But I think the brassica bed does look lovely, it doesn't have to be neat and tidy to look great when everything looks so healthy.

About Me

I've been gardening for almost three decades now, ever since my husband and I bought our first house. Every garden has been different. The first was small and the soil was almost pure sand. The second was larger and I had heavy clay. The third and current one which is just outside of Boston, is by far the largest even though the lot is by far the smallest. Since we bought the house new, we designed the landscaping ourselves, and the soil we added was fairly good. My challenge here is the location. We are so close to our neighbors that their houses can shade the garden.